Urgent News From my Family Doctor

By
Benjamin Charles Avesani

Just now, the only doctor I have known since childhood tells me, “Benjamin,
please have a seat, I have some news to discuss with you.” Although this was his usual
mundane greeting, my stomach constricted, my tongue became torrid, and my limbs grew
cold. For some reason I remember the time when as a seven-year-old boy, I managed to
fall into a ten-foot ditch. I was marooned for at least five hours that had felt like a
lifetime. I had severed part of my chin on impact and received a grim girth of earth with
the searing pain. All I said to myself was, “I will get out of this alive,” until relief arrived.
There I was, confined at the bottom of a pit thinking about how my mom, dad, brother,
and sister were beyond worried about me. Here I am, twenty-one years later, in my
doctor’s office, reliving this traumatic memory, and I still do not know what “news” the
doctor is about to reveal. He continues, “Benjamin, I am here to discuss your recent X-
ray results. They unfortunately divulge that you are in stage one of mesothelioma
cancer.” The world stops spinning. Everything in the room looks rickety and I have
never felt more hollow inside. Upon the arrival of this news, I immediately envision
gluttony that conveys the sadistic intentions of caloric fallacies. I feel slight panic but
even more docile. The Doctor then explains that this is a form of cancer that affects the
lining in the lungs and is a result of exposure to asbestos. He also explains that I would
need chemotherapy and would experience possible side effects such as; my tongue and
entire inner body will burn like fire, perpetual diarrhea, radical migraines, etc. All my life
this doctor has seen me through childhood scrapes, adolescent altering, and now the most
traumatic news of my young adult life: falling victim to Mesothelioma cancer.
As I frolicked with what felt like the aura of insanity, my mind felt as if it were cruelly
extrapolated unto the unwilling eclipse of reason. That night I had what they call a
message in a dream. I find myself standing in the same ditch I fell in as a child. As the
familiar scent of soil seeped into my sinuses, complete horror usurped my mind resulting
in a mass expenditure of frenetic questions. As I stumbled upon these boundless yet
meaningless questions I realized that a tribe of ants were erratically seizing around what
appeared to be a pregnant egg. I was then confronted by my old martial-arts kick box
coach who revealed dwindling knowledge to me. He force-fed my brain with the truths of
treachery. That I was the direct reason for my future death and his judicious words cried
out: “If your body says stop, your mind must say full throttle forward, without focusing
on the pain.” These words repeated over and over ringing in my skull to the point of
agonizing feelings of my sole presence. As what felt like one thousand tractor beams
pulling my presence into a prolapsed pit, this close-minded ‘neurogasm’ eventually
pushed me to deafness, cognitive bewilderment, disillusion, and ultimately spiritual
death.
I wake up. As if I had been revived from a psychological and neurological short
circuit. As I lay there in a cold sticky sweat that smelled like that of an exposed irritated
scalp, I made the decision: to fight cancer with all of my mind, soul, and every ounce of
psychological fortitude I could rip out of my sharp conscience. My knowledge of the
disease was limited, and while Dr. Frankenstein is an excellent resource, he was not a
cancer specialist. At best, his role was to be moral support for my family during this
seedy process. I admit, there was a part of me that was terrified of the unknown, but that
little boy trapped in the pit was still in me, and reminded me, “I will get out of this alive.”
Next, I began my trek to fight this rancor by scheduling an appointment with a cancer
specialist. Simultaneously, I began my own online research journey and cross-reference
noted information with leading research institutes and medical library resources. In
addition I contacted the Cancer Treatment Center Of America and begin to explore their
several approaches to fighting this disease. I was encouraged to learn that their motto
was: “Care That Never Quits.” Quitting was never an option I had decided. It was not an
option for Benjamin as a seven-year old boy and nor was it an option for me at age thirty-
one. I fought with all my body, mind, and soul muscle because it is life sustaining
whereas a life without muscle sags with hopelessness. So I kept my scarred chin high and
fought onward until the day of reckoning.
Rhio O Conner inspires me, because he is both like my dad and I. We have one
rudimentary similarity. An extreme fighter spirit. Our mind goes further then what
possibilities seem to be. It truly is incredible, how strong the human spirit and mind can
manipulate physical limits. Rhio is an excellent example of this, displaying how the mind
can control the body’s stability. Times will change as well as our health. The weak will
succumb to the ravages of time and the strong will survive. Surviving calls for a mindset
and mental process like my father.
Back to my childhood, I was a teenager when I encountered a night that I would
never forget. Awoken by a roar in the middle of the night that came from my parent’s
bedroom, I ran swiftly to the scene. The pancreas of my father had in fact, exploded. My
dad was lying on the bedroom floor and was pulsating in pain. My older brother took him
and told my mother to get in the car. He drove frantically to the hospital. When we
arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered that my fathers pain level was a skull-rattling
7000. The maximum pain level to operate was 700. I remember shortly after the doctors
telling my mother, “Mrs. Avesani, say your goodbyes.” My mother, shaken by a life
force, went to speak her final words to her best friend and beloved husband. When she
arrived, my father was the first to speak. He told my mom with a load of morphine, “The
Lord will keep an eye on me. I will get out of here because my family needs me.”
Thinking he would not make it, the doctors decided to do surgery anyways. During the
surgery, my father’s heart came to a silenced halt. However, he was not relinquished! He
was shocked back to life. After ten hours of intense surgery the doctors had no
explanation of how my father survived. Yet this was only the beginning.

Chapter two descended, as the surgery team stitched his stomach together. Shortly
after due to swelling, his stitches burst. At this point, the doctors had given him no
chance of survival, declaring his heart will stop again. Nevertheless, convicted in a coma,
my father still did not give up. The doctors then decided, his stomach must grow in form
while the stitches inevitably will not avoid the swelling. He looked similar to that of a
developmentally delayed piece of meat and smelled like he had been belched upon by
infected lungs. Horror movies felt like a comedy compared to my dad’s current
disposition. Chapter three arrived; as his inner stomach started building an immense
quantity of puss, the doctors still give him no chance. He would die this time of an excess
of bodily puss. One last time, my father pushed onward with all he had left to give. At
last, he survived the physical tribulation of his life. For the following year my father was
hospitalized back to substantial equilibrium until he could once again return to his
healthy role as a father.
The struggle to watch my dad to wrestle with the angel of death, and conquer this
natural force through victory, was an experience that molded my spiritual strength and
resilience as a fighter who will never quit.

“face the fear and live your life...”